Netanyahu promises to connect Betar Illit with Jerusalem
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to help link the Betar Illit settlement with nearby Jerusalem by building a road that would cut commuting time between the two cities by 15 minutes.
“With the new road it will take about 15 to 20 minutes to get here,” said Netanyahu as he stood in the second largest settlement in the West Bank.
“We’re renewing Jerusalem. We’re renewing Betar. And we are making a connection between them,” Netanyahu said as he spoke of how the Jewish people had returned to the two biblical era cities.
He came to Betar Illit to open a new neighborhood in the haredi city of over 50,000 people, which was established in the 1990s.
Thursday morning’s event marked Netanyahu’s first visit to the city since taking office in 2009. It was also the first time he’s attended a cornerstone laying ceremony for a large neighborhood in Judea and Samaria.
“There is no government that does more for the settlement in the Land of Israel, than this government under my leadership,” the prime minister said.
He addressed the crowd on a makeshift stage inside a large white tent set up on an undeveloped hilltop that will one day have more than 1,000 homes. Located just over the Green Line, it will be the city’s third hilltop.
“We’re working energetically to settle all parts of the country, Netanyahu added. He told the ceremony’s several hundred participants that the city was close to his heart.
It is from these hilltops, that in the first century CE, the Jewish military leader Shimon Bar-Kochba fought the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple.
“We have an obligation to continue to develop the city,” he added. The prime minister joked that the city was growing so rapidly that soon Jerusalem would become a suburb of Betar.
“This is an exaggeration, but it is important because it shows the connection between it and Zion. From here you see Jerusalem here, just as [the ancient] Betar fighters saw Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said.
“Our generation has succeeded in achieving what past generations only dreamed about. We have returned to our home land and have turned it once again into a land of milk and honey.
His visit was one of three gestures he made to the settlement movement and his right-wing base over Wednesday and Thursday.
Earlier in the day, Netanyahu’s chief of staff met with residents of the Netiv Ha’ avot outpost to help them with finding a housing solution in advance of the High Court of Justice order that 15 homes must be destroyed in March 2018.
Netanyahu said on Wednesday that he’d also held a meeting to advance work on the new Amihai settlement for 40 families who had lived in the destroyed Amona outpost.